The Woman Behind the Scenes: The Influence of Heirs’ Mother in Family Business

Increasing studies recognize the important role of women in family business. While prior studies mainly highlight the role of women as daughter (being a female heir or a female entrepreneur), our study aims to explore the role of women as heirs’ mother in large family business. Inspired by the “uterine family” in anthropology and resource dependence theory, we expect that a mother in a polygamous business family would strategically allocate her resources to enhance the chance of one of her children becoming the successor, which influence power imbalance among heirs. Using a family business group in Taiwan as our research context, we found that the heirs of the same mother are more likely to have greater power imbalance in the family business group. Our study contributes to succession and family business literatures by enriching the understanding of heirs’ mother in family business.